Brian:
I caught this on Spike TV in the last week or so again, and this movie - to me - was really "this close" to being better than it was. As I was watching it, I realized that I actually liked a lot of portions of this movie (and thought it was great the first couple times I saw it in the theater, but maybe that was the "newness" factor). I really like just about all the Obi-Wan stuff in here. The Obi vs Jango (in person and in space), unraveling the "mystery" of the clones and Sifo Dyas, and his character arc in general. Plus, there's the often mentioned last forty five minutes or so - the entire Geonisis arena sequence from when Anakin/Padme enter the arena until the end is pretty good. I even like the opening sequence through Coruscant well enough. The parts that drag the movie down are really, for the most part, the love story aspects. That isn't necessarily a criticism of Christiansen or Portman, who I think are both capable actors (pretty good in other roles that I've seen), but just the way the dialog is written and the scenes in general. The majority of their "alone" stuff is tough to watch for the most part. Also, another thing that has always stuck out to me - in the opening Coruscant chase scene in particular - is the dialog between Obi-Wan and Anakin. I think I've mentioned this before, but the whole "my very young apprentice" stuff gets a little old. Anyways, just thought of this thread after seeing the movie again lately.

MistaBinks:
I am not a regular poster here but I thought I would chime in. I think I would have to say I liked everything. I agree with all the negative points everyone above made. Still, it's Star Wars, and for whatever reason, I end up growing to enjoy everything (except Ahsoka in the CW film but that is another story, lol).

I remember vacationing in Seattle and catching AOTC on IMAX. If you recall, they had to trim down the running time because (at the time) IMAX could only show 2 hour movies. I immediately noticed the cuts and wanted them back. LOL, I am not sure if it wasn't a better movie w/out a lot of the "romance scenes" removed.

Darth Broem:
AOTC is really pretty bad up until the Arena scenes I think. I actually like it once they started fighting. Of course for the most part they all quit talking which was sweet relief. Although Kenobi's lines like "Very good my young Padawan!" annoy me along the way. All the "Annie" lines are irritating. The lightsaber "fight" between Dooku and Anakin fizzled. I liked Yoda fighting with the lightsaber. The clones fighting. All the Jedi fighting the battle droids was decent. Jango Fett was decent but of course Boba turned out to be annoying. "Firer!!!" "Ha-hahahaha!" "I don't think we will be seeing him again." Uggh.

All it all I liked it much more than TPM. But yeah the toy line was terrible. Natalie Portman looked good in quite of a few of those outfits. So, that made the terrible dialogue somewhat manageable...kind of...sort of...maybe?

I actually laughed out loud in the theatre when Anakin uttered "You are in my soul torrrrrmenting me," just because it was so incredibly bad. Then the "We live in a real world. Come back to it!" Oh just horrible stuff. It was painful to hear.

But for some reason I can watch that movie more than TPM.

Nathan:
I'm rewatching this and until now I don't think I appreciated how bad the dialogue and acting really are. I mean, this dialogue is like something I would have written in sixth grade. (At least crack a thesaurus, George!) And eighty percent of the acting is just ******* dismal, which is a shame considering the crew of actors on board.

You can get by with ****** dialogue if you have great performances, and to a lesser extent good dialogue can salvage a poor performance. But this is the worst of both.

George's storyline is great, but he needed a real director to get decent performances out of the bunch. And a better screenwriter than Jonathan Hales--or perhaps George simply didn't let him change much on the AOTC script and that's why he wasn't asked back for ROTS.

Brian:
You know, I was watching this on Spike last week for a bit and noticed something I hadn't thought about before. I'm sure it has been discussed previously, and I just missed it, but in ESB when Chewie is reassembling C-3PO I was always under the impression that his head didn't "work" until Chewie attached it to his torso (and then turning it on). Then, in AOTC we see his head by itself, with lit up eyes and talking, on several occasions. Again, maybe just something I am wrong about (regarding the ESB stuff), but it seemed like something that was maybe overlooked. Anyways, just an observation.